The Goal

All your wonderful inventions,
    All your houses vast and tall,
All your great gun-fronted vessels,
    Every fort and every wall,
With the passing of the ages,
    They shall pass and they shall fall.

As you sit among the idols
    That your avarice gave birth,
As you count the hoarded treasures
    That you think of priceless worth,
Time is digging tombs to hide them
    In the bosom of the earth.

There shall come a great convulsion
    Or a rushing tidal wave,
Or a sound of mighty thunders
    From a subterranean cave,
And a boasting world's possessions
    Shall be buried in one grave.

From the Centuries of Silence
    We are bringing back again
Buried vase and bust and column
    And the gods they worshipped then,
In the strange unmentioned cities
    Built by prehistoric men.

Did they steal, and lie, and slaughter?
    Did they steep their souls in shame?
Did they sell eternal virtues
    Just to win a passing fame?
Did they give the gold of honour
    For the tinsel of a name?

We are hurrying all together
    Toward the silence and the night;
There is nothing worth the seeking
    But the sun-kissed moral height -
There is nothing worth the doing
    But the doing of the RIGHT.